NATIONAL STEREOTYPES IN HUNGARIAN AND POLISH PROVERBS AND PHRASEOLOGISMS

Due to the integration and globalization processes currently taking place in the world, the problem of intercultural communication commands interest to an increasing extent today. The perspective of a united Europe and the related requirement of a possibly conflict-free establishment of tolerance-based relationships among people make it necessary for us to learn more about the complex issues of the functioning of cultural systems, including the reasons of the emergence and spread of stereotypes, pre- and postjudices. The author gives a brief survey of cognitive and psychological/social functions of stereotypes and points out that they are in a close relationship with the categorization and conceptualization of extralinguistic pieces of information. Those two processes are based on a natural ambition of cultural communities, as well as social and ethnic groups, the aim of which is to keep and assert their own values, habits, world view, mentality, cultural specificity, and national identity. Among other ways, these aims tend to be achieved by seeing other nations in a xenophobic perspective. The author discusses this issue using the material of Hungarian and Polish proverbs and phraseo­logical units. Stereotypes are an integral part of one's linguistic world view, a special way of seeing the world through a linguistic and cultural prism.